George,
I feel your pain. I'm "helping" the kids build a tree house. Nothing
fancy, just an 8X12 deck, dead level, built around two trees that are
about 3 feet apart, cantilevered off the trees with no other support;
with a gabled roof and plywood walls, painted to match the house. No
glass in the windows or paneling on the interior walls or anything
fancy like that. But I have to keep reminding myself that it's just a
tree house. I find myself obsessing over each joint, and each
surface, just like you described. I can hear the voice of some fellow
woodworker point out some place where a joint isn't tight, or an edge
isn't rounded over. Or worse; the silence that goes with contempt. I
don't even have any woodworkers who come over to critique my work, but
still, I hear their accusations that I just didn't care enough to do
it right. Our friends, doubtless like yours, are simply amazed that I
can take simple boards and turn them into useful, sometimes even
attractive items. But their praises are not the voices I hear. I
hear only the critic that lives in my head, who looks at every tiny
mistake and says, "And you call yourself a woodworker?"

DonkeyHody
"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom
that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down
on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid
again---and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold
one anymore." - Mark Twain


(George) wrote in message . com...
I decided recently to build some shelving units in my Garage.
Basically, I have accumulated so many tools, supplies and jigs etc,
that I have pushed both cars out of the garage. SWMBO is very
supportive and doesn't seem to mind that I spend thousands of dollars
on tools and wood and spend the whole weekend in the garage making
sawdust and drinking beer, as long as she occassionally gets a piece
of furniture out of the deal.


Anyway, here is my problem. For a set of garage shelves, what I
really needed was some 2/4 structure with some particle board shelves.
Probably a weekend's work.

But noooo.. I decide to make a massive birch cabinet 10 feet wide, two
feet deep and 8 foot high, complete with doors. Also, I am finding
that the longer I am in this darn hobby, the more fussy I get. A cut
this is off 1/64th I have to force myself not to scrap. I have been
tinkering with this thing a couple hours every other day for a week or
so and I got to wondering.. why? Why do I have to have a cosmetically
perfect shelf for the garage? I am wondering if I am going insane.

Any thoughts?

George